Many computers process data in a pipelined process. A processor which uses a pipelined processing technique and which receives a stream of data to be operated upon by the processor can be divided into segments referred to as processing stages, each processing stage being capable of executing operations on data. The processing stages make up a pipeline. Several data packets may simultaneously be present in the processor pipeline, being operated upon by different processing stages, and being brought forward to the next processing stage in the pipeline as time flows. Each processing stage can execute operations on the data present in the processing stage. Upon each clock tick, data is passed onto the subsequent stage by loading registers that are located between the previous and the subsequent processing stages. The data thus becomes present in the subsequent stage.